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CHINA

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

FOE “

MISSION CIRCLES AND BANDS.

PHILADELPHIA :

WOMAN’S FOREIGN MISSIONARY SOCIETY
OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH,

No. 1334 Chestnut Street.

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2017 with funding from
Princeton Theological Seminary Library

https://archive.org/details/chinaquestionsanOOunse

CHINA.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

FOR

MISSION CIRCLES AND BANDS.

Q. What are some of the names by which
China is known ?

Cathay, the Middle Kingdom, the Flowery Land,
the Celestial Empire and the Land of Sinim.

Q. How ancient are its records ?

They reach farther back than the time of
Abraham.

Q. What are the great divisions of the Chinese
Empire ?

China Proper, Manchuria, Mongolia, Thibet,
East Turkestan and Jungaria.

Q. How many people are there in the Empire ?

The number is variously estimated from three
hundred and fifty millions to four hundred mil-
lions.

4

Q. Can you illustrate this great number, so that
we can understand it better?

Make an army of them, and let them move
before you at the rate of thirty miles a day, week
after week, month after month, and they will not
pass in less than twenty-three and a half years ;
or if all the people in the world should march
in a single line, every fourth person would be a
Chinese.

Q. How many Chinese are estimated to die
every day ?

Thirty-three thousand.

Q. What is China Proper ?

That part of the empire, which was conquered
by the Manchus or Tartars in 1664. It is divided
into eighteen provinces, and is the only part of the
empire settled by Chinese.

Q. How does China Proper compare in size
with the whole empire, and with the United
States ?

It comprises one half the area of the empire,
and is about equal to twenty-eight of our states.

Q. Name the provinces where the missionaries
of the Presbyterian Church are stationed ?

The provinces of Chihli* containing Peking;

* All Chinese names of two syllables are accented on the
second syllable.

5

Shantung containing Chefoo and Tungchow;
Kiangsu containing Nanking, Suchow and
Shanghai ; Chekiang containing Hangchow and
Ningpo ; and Kwangtong containing Canton.

Q. What is the climate of China ?

In Peking the winters are very cold and the
summers hot; in Ningpo the winters are mild,
but they have a great deal of rain, and much
miasma in the summer and autumn ; in Canton
they have a long summer, and need no stove heat
in the winter.

Q. Do the Chinese use stoves for warmth ?

At Ningpo they use only foot and hand stoves.
In North China, they have the hang, or raised
mason-work bed which is heated by burning straw
inside of it. They also have in Peking an open
furnace in which they burn coal or charcoal.
Sometimes whole families are suffocated by the
carbonic acid gas which is often allowed to pass
freely into the room where they are sleeping.

Q. Of what do the Chinese build their houses ?

In the cities they are of grey brick, built
around an open court on which the doors and.
windows open. In the villages the houses are
often built of mud with thatched roofs, and the
floors are of earth which has been beaten hard.

6

Q. Do they have glass windows ?

Not often. Their windows are of paper pasted
over lattice-work, or of oyster shells scraped thin.

Q. What is the ordinary food of the Chinese ?

Rice, salt fish and vegetables. Meat is a
luxury. In North China they eat corn-meal
and millet cakes, sweet potatoes, etc.

Q. Do they use milk or beef?

No. They do not use milk in any form, and
they think it wrong to kill the cow or water buf-
falo (which is more common) because they are
used in tilling the ground.

Q. What valuable plants and trees have they
that we have not ?

The tea-plant, the camphor-tree, the bamboo,
the varnish-tree, wax-trees, soap-tree, tallow-tree
and li-chee.

Q. What valuable insect gives employment to
multitudes of men, women and children ?

The silk- worm.

Q. What kinds of game are found in China ?

Beautiful gold and silver pheasants, wild ducks,
grouse, quail and deer.

Q. Mention some of the customs of the people
which are directly opposed to those of Europeans.

“We shake a friend’s hand; the Chinaman

1

shakes his own hands. We uncover the head as a
mark of respect; they keep the head covered.
We cut our finger nails ; they think it aristocratic
to have the nails from three to five inches long,
often protecting them with a silver sheath. We
blacken our shoes, they whiten the soles of their
shoes.”

Q. Mention some contrasts in wedding customs.

u Here young people prefer to do their own
courting ; there the parents, with the help of go-
betweens, select the husbands and wives for their
children, and these often do not see each other till
the wedding is over.”

Q. Give some contrasts in funeral customs.

u A coffin would not be considered a very ac-
ceptable present here, but in China a coffin is
often given to a parent or friend while in perfect
health.” Our mourning dress is black, theirs is
white.

Q. Mention a few more differences.

“ Here a mother shows her affection by kissing
her child, there by smelling it. We locate intellect
in the brain, they in the stomach. We use a soft
pillow ; they, a block of wrood. Our store signs
are horizontal, theirs are perpendicular. They
ring bells by striking on the outside, and their
screws turn in the opposite direction to ours. ”

Q. Give Wong Ning’s experience illustrating
other customs.

“My name Wong Ning. I come this country
thirteen years old. Little boy have hard time on
home China. Have to get up and go school six
o’clock — very early that — come home get break-
fast eight o’clock, and lunch twelve o’clock then
stay till six o’clock in the day. I no think Melican
boy like that. Little girl no go school at all.
Little girl no speak to boy — no! never ! If China
boy no like mother, no work hard for she, no send
she everything. Oh! horrible! very bad! All
sons marry, bring home wife to wait on she. No
like wife so much as mother on home China.
Woman, wife, little girl all work in house, sew,
cook, weave cloth. When make dinner, set table
very nice, then run behind curtain — then father,
son, little boy, all come in, sit down, eat dinner,
eat him all up. By and by woman, little girls
come quiet, lift curtain, if he all gone, can come
eat, if no, cannot come.”

Q. Describe the process of foot binding?

The compression of the foot is never begun
until the girls have learned to walk, generally not
before five or six years of age. A cotton bandage
two or three inches wide is wound tightly about
the foot in every direction. This bandage is
tightened until the foot is considered small enough.

9

The foot is then in the shape of an acute angled
triangle, and the toes bent under the foot. A shoe
worn by a woman twenty-two years old, measured
three inches on the flat sole, from the tip of the
toe to the heels.

Q. What are the principal exports from China ?

Tea, silk, medicines and fire-crackers.

Q. The principal imports ?

Cotton goods, kerosene and opium.

Q. Do intoxicating liquors attract the Chinese ?

Very little. A drunken Chinaman is rarely
seen, but opium seems to have more attractions
for them than for any other people.

Q. What effect has it upon them ?

It ruins them in mind, body .and estate.

Q. To what extent is it used?

It has been said that one-quarter of the adult
male population is addicted to opium smoking.

Q. What is meant by the Opium War?

The war of 1840, which began in this way.
English merchants had for years been bringing
opium into China. The mandarins (officials) found
that it was injuring and impoverishing the people,
and tried in every way to stop the trade. At
length a mandarin in Canton, called Lin, com-

]0

pelled the English merchants to give up all the
opium they had on hand. Twenty thousand two
hundred and eighty chests were given up, and the
Chinese destroyed them all, thus showing their
earnestness in suppressing the traffic. In conse-
quence of this the English declared war against
China. The Chinese were defeated and had to
pay to Great Britain, for the expenses of the war,
twenty-one million dollars, and opium was forced
upon them.

Q. What good results followed this war ?

Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo and Shanghai were
by treaty opened to trade and consequently to mis-
sionaries.

Q. Are these the only ports open to foreigners ?

No. In 1861, after another war with England,
ten more ports were opened.

Q. What is the name of the present emperor
of China?

Kwongsu.

Q. When did he ascend the throne ?

In January, 1875, at the age of five years.

Q. To what dynasty does he belong ?

He is the ninth emperor of the Tartar dynasty
of Ts'ing.

11

Q. When did the Tartars come into power?

When they conquered the Chinese in 1644.

Q. How did the plaited queue originate ?

It was imposed upon the Chinese as a badge of
subjection by their conquerors, the Tartars.

Q. Why are they so unwilling to cut off the
queue in this country ?

Because if they return to China, as they all
hope to do, they will be regarded as rebels.

Q. What was the Ming dynasty ?

The last of the Chinese emperors were called
Mings. Their tombs, a few days’ journey from
Peking, are exceedingly interesting. Great-stone
images of camels, elephants, etc., stand on either
side of the avenue which leads to the tombs.

Q. Who were the Taipings ?

A *set. of Rebels who wished to put down the
Tartars and place the Chinese again upon the
throne. They wore their hair long, and unshaven,
and so were called Long-haired Rebels. For
many years they devastated the country, destroy-
ing city after city, and butchering thousands upon
thousands of the people.

Q. Who was their leader ?

A man from the province of Kwangse, calling
himself Tin Wong, or Heavenly King.

12

Q. What do we know of him ?

He had learned something of Jesus Christ and
the Sabbath from a missionary in Canton. These
ideas he mingled with his own strange fancies, and
blasphemously called himself the Son of God.

Q. Who helped to subdue the Taipings ?

Gen. Gordon, often called Chinese Gordon.

Q. When was this Rebellion quelled?

In the year 1864 after the fall of Nanking. The
famous Porcelain Tower, nine stories high, was
then destroyed.

Q. Was the art of printing early known in
China?

Yes. It was understood nine hundred years
before it was in Europe.

Q. What curious way have the Chinese of reck-
oning ages, etc.?

If a child is born on the last day of 1883, on
the first day of 1885 they would say, he is three
years old, because he has lived in three years,
while really he is only one year old. For this
reason the little Emperor may only have been
three years old instead of five at his accession.
We can only tell by knowing in what part of the
year he was born.

13

Q. Give another example of this peculiarity.

If you hire a boat Thursday afternoon and re-
turn it Saturday morning, you must pay for its
use for three full days instead of a day and a half.

Q. Do you remember anything similar to this
in the Bible?

Yes. Jesus Christ was said to be in the grave
three days, when really he was there only a whole
day and a night.

Q. What are the three principal religions of
China ?

Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism.*

Q. What form of religion, which is included in
these three systems, has more power over all
classes of Chinese than any other?

Ancestral worship.

Q. Define it.

“ It includes not only the direct worship of the
dead, but all that is done for their comfort, and
all that is done to avert calamities which departed
spirits are supposed to bring upon the living as a
punishment for inattention to their necessities.”

Q. What singular thing grew out of this ?

At the death of an emperor, even if he is very
young, his successor must be younger than he, be-

* Pronounced like ow in how.

14

cause lie must worship his predecessor, and this
sort of worship is never rendered by the elder to
the younger. The late emperor Tung Chi died
young, without children. Prince Kong, an able
statesman, was the right, one to succeed him, but
because he was older than the late king, little
Kwongsu more distantly related, was placed upon
the throne and the empire under a regency of two
dowager Empresses, one of whom has since died.

Q. Where and when was Confucius born ?

In the Shantung Province, 551 B. C.

Q. With whofn was he contemporary ?

With the prophet Daniel.

Q. Tell something of his life.

He was a poor boy, who always regarded his
mother with affectionate reVerence. At the age
of twenty-two he taught history and the writings
of the ancients. He studied much and became
famous as a teacher. Disciples flocked to him
from all regions.

Q. Did he become a magistrate ?

Yes ; and he ruled so wisely that he was idolized
by the people: then jealousies drove him from
home, and he wandered thirteen years in neighbor-
ing states. At the age of seventy-three he died,
showing no fear, offering no prayer.

15

Q. Did lie believe in the gods or teach idol
worship ?

No. He said “We do not understand the gods,
it is best not to meddle with them. ”

Q. Did he profess to teach anything about the
future ?

No. He said “Let us make the best we can of
the present ; we know nothing of what is beyond.”

Q. What did Confucius say of man’s nature ?

That it is naturally good.

Q. What did he teach about women ?

That they have no souls.

Q. Hive his form of the golden rule.

“ What you do not wish done to yourself, do
not do to others. ”

Q. What class of people are Confucianists ?

All the literary men of China. Every boy who
goes to school must bow to the tablet with Con-
fucius’ name on it.

Q. Is his image worshiped ?

Not at all.

Q. When did Buddha, the founder of Buddhism,
live?

A thousand years before Christ.

16

Q. How did Buddhism come into China ?

The Emperor Mingti (A. D. 61) had a dream,
which led him to send to India for books and
teachers.

Q. What was the result ?

In the course of years over three thousand
Buddhist missionaries went to China, and Budd-
hism became the religion of the people.

Q. How does this compare with what is now
being done by Christians for China ?

All the richest Protestant nations of the world
only maintain four hundred male missionaries in
China, one for every million of people.

Q. What is the great doctrine of the Buddhists?

Transmigration of souls, or the passing of a
soul from one body or state to another.

Q. Do true Buddhists eat meat?

No; and they fear to kill an animal, as they
might destroy some soul who inhabits it.

Q. What is Taoism ?

A system of magical rites and charms. It has
a great many gods, as the god of wealth, god
of war, of thunder, of small-pox, the kitchen
god, etc., etc.

17

Q. What is really the religion of most of the
Chinese ?

A mixture of the corrupt forms of all these
three religions. A man can be a Confucianist, a
Taoist, and a Buddhist at the same time.

Q. What do you think about the so called filial
piety of the Chinese?

That it is often a sham, because more attention
is paid to the dead than to the living parent.

Q. Give a story illustrating their ideas of filial
piety.

There was once a boy named Han. He often
misbehaved, and his mother beat him with a bam-
boo rod. One day he cried after the beating : his
mother was greatly surprised and said, I have
beaten you many a time before and you have
never cried, why do you cry to-day? “Oh, mother,
he replied, you used to hurt me when you flogged
me but now I weep because you are not strong
enough to hurt me.” It makes one weep, says the
Chinese moralist, even to read the story.

Q. Give the story of dutiful Loo.

A man named Loo was very dutiful to his
mother. She was a very nervous woman, and al-
ways dreadfully frightened in a thunder storm.
When she died, Loo buried her in a wood, and

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whenever the wind rose and a tempest threatened,
he ran to the tomb, knelt down and with tears
cried out, “Loo is near you, don’t be afraid,
mother.”

Q. When did the Roman Catholics enter China ?

In the thirteenth century.

Q. Who was the most successful of their mis-
sionaries?

Matteo Ricci (pronounced Richie.)

Q. What were his methods ?

So anxious was he to please the Chinese, that
he drew a map of the world, and placed China in
the centre and other countries in the margin. He
even combined the teachings of Confucius with
those of Jesus Christ. After twenty years of
patient toil, he obtained access to the Emperor.
In the ten years that followed multitudes of all
ranks were baptized.

Q. Did the Roman Catholics translate the Bible
into Chinese?

They did not.

Q. How many priests, colleges and convents do
they report now?

Six hundred European priests, about as many
Chinese priests, and seventy colleges and convents.

19

MISSIONS.

Q. Who was the first Protestant Missionary to
China ?

Dr. Robert Morrison, sent out in 1807, by the
London Missionary Society.

Q. What was his great work ?

The translation of the Bible into Chinese.

Q. What are the three missions of the Presby-
terian Church in China ?

The Ningpo mission, founded by Dr. McCartee
in 1844; the Canton Mission, begun by Dr. Hap-
per and others in 1845, and the Peking Mission
begun at Chefoo, by Dr. Nevius in 1861.

Q. What five large cities are included in the
Ningpo Mission?

Ningpo, Shanghai, Hangchow, Suchow and
Nanking.

Q. What can you tell of interest about the
Ningpo Mission?

It comprises thirteen ch*urches, each having a
Chinese minister.

20

Q. Have most of these men had a thorough
training?

Yes, in the Boarding school, and afterwards in
the Theological class.

Q. What did Dr. Nevius once say of the schools
of Ningpo?

That while they had received only one-fourth
of the time and labor of the missionaries, they
had furnished more than one-half of the church
members.

Q. What great help to missionary work do we
find in Shanghai?

The large Presbyterian Mission Press, where
under the superintendance of a missionary, eighty
Chinamen are employed in printing books for the
different missions in China.

Q. What departments are there in the building?

There are eight presses, a type foundry, elec-
ttrotyping and stereotyping rooms and a book-
bindery.

Q. Does the press cost the Board anything?

Not only does it pay its own expenses and those
of the missionary in charge, but it brings money
into the treasury.

21

Q. What interesting work do we find at Canton
besides the regular preaching and school-work?

A Hospital, where Dr. Kerr has treated thou-
sands of patients, and where these thousands have
first heard of the Great Physician.

Q. Mention an instance showing how good is
often done by hospital work.

Not long since a man asked for baptism. He
lived many miles from Canton but he said that
twenty years before, his grandmother had been
cured at the hospital, and ever since, she had
given up her idols and had taught her children to
do the same.

Q. What are the cities or stations, as we call
them, included in the Shantung and Peking Mis-
sions ?

Tungchow, Chefoo, Peking and Chenanfoo.

Q. What mode of work has done great good in
this part of China, called North China?

Itineration, that is making long tours, preaching
and selling books at all the towns and villages by
the way.

Q. Have many Chinese been added to the
church in this way ?

Yes, often more than a hundred have been added
at one time.

22

Q . Why are Missionary Physicians very useful
in China?

On account of the extreme ignorance of the
native doctors, and the fact that when the people
have been healed they are more ready to accept
the gospel.

Q. Do the Chinese officials show any interest in
missionary work?

More in the medical work than in any other.
One has founded a hospital at Tientsin, (North
China), and another has just asked Dr. Atter-
bury, one of our missionaries in Peking, to start
a medical college and send to America for
teachers.. The officials promise liberal aid in
putting up the buildings.

Q. Mention the names of ten of our noble mis-
sionaries who have died working for China.

The Revs. Walter Lowrie, Culbertson, Way,
Quarterman, Rankin, Reuben Lowrie, Preston,
Wm. Morrison, Green and M’llvaine.

Q. Who are our oldest missionaries now in
China?

Rev. Drs. Happer and Nevius.

Q. How many converts do all the thirty-three
societies working in China number?

Twenty-four thousand.

23

Q. How many in the Presbyterian mission ?

Over two thousand.

Q. What text impresses some of the Chinese
more than it does many Christian people in this
land?

“ Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel
to every creature.”

Q. What did an old Chinaman say to Mr.
Corbett?

“ How long ago did you say Jesus Christ came ?”
“ Nearly nineteen hundred years ago.” “Why I
can’t understand it. What have your people been
doing all this while ? Here I am eighty years old
and I never heard it till now.”

Q. What did an aged Chinese woman say to
the missionary when asked why she put off being
baptized ?

She said “ I do love the Lord Jesus and I think
He has taken away my sins, but,” the tears
streaming down her cheeks, “you know Jesus
said to His disciples, ‘ go ye into all the world and
preach the gospel,’ now I am a poor old woman
nearly seventy, and nearly blind, I cannot go into
all the world.”

24

Q. What did she say she could do?

She said, “ I am willing to tell my husband and
son, and his wife, when he marries. I am willing
to tell my neighbors, and I could perhaps go to
one or two villages. Tell me, if the Lord will
accept this of a. poor old woman of my age?”

Q. What did the missionary say ?

u That is all the Lord wants : He wants each of
us to do our best.” Then she looked up with eyes
full of earnestness and said, “ Tell me, can I be a
disciple, and be baptized without going into
foreign countries?” Yes. “Then I am ready to
be baptized whenever you like.”